Dream
by labyrinths
Summary: Lisa has a nightmare and talks to Joshua about it. Joshua/Lisa


**Dream**

**By Hedge Labyrinth**

_Disclaimer: V doesn't belong to me. Just toying with some ideas._

Two weeks after she has left the mothership, after she has abandoned Anna and joined the Fifth Column, Lisa dreams.

She dreams she is a child again and she is standing in the lab bay, fascinated by a tank filled with corals. Joshua has let her inside his father's lab – though she really shouldn't be there – and she taps the glass and hums to herself.

A crack appears in the glass. It grows larger and larger. Lisa steps back. The crack multiplies into hundreds of smaller cracks. The aquarium's walls break, water gushing towards the floor. She panics when the water touches her shoes.

"Look what you have done," a voice hisses in her ear.

Lisa turns to find her mother behind her. Anna's hands wrap around Lisa's neck, squeezing, squeezing until ...

She wakes up covered in a film of sweat. She's had maybe four dreams in her entire life and never a nightmare. The experience rattles her. Barefoot, panicking, she pads towards Joshua's room and knocks at his door.

He opens the door quickly. She wonders if he was awake. Maybe he is a light sleeper. Maybe he also has bad dreams that startle him in the dark.

"Lisa?"

"I dreamt," she mutters, shivering so very slightly. "Is that normal?"

Joshua looks at her calmly, with his placid, reassuring expression and nods. "It is not a medical hazard, if that is what you are wondering."

"But we don't ... do you ... dream?"

He hesitates for a second, leans against the doorframe. "Not a lot. More often now. The lack of bliss seems to trigger it."

"Could I have something for it?"

"So you don't dream?"

"It was a bad dream, Joshua."

"May I ask what it was about?"

"My mother."

Lisa breaths out slowly. Joshua is quiet. He's always been the silent type. Deferential and polite. When she was younger, he seemed so grown-up to her, despite their small age difference. He was mature, even for their kind. But then, he had to be.

"Do you remember when you let me play in your father's lab?" she asks.

Joshua raises an eyebrow at her. "Years ago."

"I dreamt I was there. In the lab. Remember the corals?"

"You spent hours staring at them."

His expression hardens and she feels sorry she even brought it up because she remembers – too late – that his father is dead and his harmless experiments of coral colonies have been replaced with more noxious learning.

He runs a hand through his hair, which is already unruly and now stands up even more, and it is so unlike Joshua to be ungroomed, each hair in its place, that it makes her smile and for no reason she speaks. "I think your hair looks cute like that."

"What?" he asks, and his calm, quiet control slips away for a second and he looks utterly confused.

She feels twice sorry in the span of a few minutes. She is standing in a too-large gray sweatshirt and shorts, barefoot, telling Joshua that he is cute.

That his _hair_ is cute, damn it and it makes her feel silly for bothering to knock in the first place.

"I should go back to bed then, since there's no prescription for dreams," she mutters.

"If you have another nightmare you could talk to me," he says. "It might help."

"Yes. I will."

There's the creak of wood above their heads. Hobbs sleeps on the second floor of their little hideaway and the noise makes Lisa grow silent, fearing he might be listening to them.

She doesn't know why she fears he is listening, when there is nothing of interest to hear. Nevertheless, Lisa feels an unintended blush creep upon her cheeks, as though she's sharing some great secret with Joshua.

"Well ... goodnight," she whispers, taking two, three steps back. Still looking at him. Unwilling to turn her back.

Joshua clears his throat. "I was going to watch some television, anyway. Do you ... I mean, are you going right back to bed? Or, I mean ... you could ..."

If this was the mothership she might remind him who he is speaking to. She recalls her mother's talk about fraternizing, the importance of rank, the clear divisions between an official of the minor-aristocracy and a future queen. But Lisa is a pauper queen with no court and she's already broken so many rules before.

"Yes," she nods vigorously. "I can stay up with you."

"There's this fascinating thing," he tells her as they walk down the hallway. "Jack says it's called a 'musical' and there is singing and dancing, and the one I watched the other night was black and white and the man wore a top hat."

Joshua clasps his hands behind his back. Lisa smiles and glances up at him.

The END


End file.
